Windows 11 is finally getting an easy way to access dark mode — and a fix for those 'flashbangs' that still plague File Explorer

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  • Windows 11 is getting a new more convenient way to enable dark mode
  • Microsoft is also implementing a fix for some remaining File Explorer bugs — white flashes on the screen — caused by dark mode last year
  • That'll hopefully be the end of those 'flashbangs', but all this work is still in testing for now

Microsoft is ushering in an improvement for dark mode in Windows 11, as well as fixing a bug that has been hanging around for almost half a year involving distracting white flashes that was caused by work on dark mode.

As Windows Latest noticed, a new preview build in the Beta channel for Windows 11 features the following change, as described by Microsoft: "Removed white flash when launching new File Explorer windows or tabs when File Explorer was set to open to This PC. Also removed white flashes when resizing elements of File Explorer."

If you recall, back in November 2025, Microsoft expanded dark mode so it included a bunch of file operation pop-ups (the boxes that appear when copying or moving files, for example, which were previously left jarringly white when in dark mode).

This change went into testing last October, in fact, but when it was rolled out fully to Windows 11 users, it was found to have introduced a nasty bug whereby people were seeing white flashes on the screen when they were interacting with File Explorer in different ways.

That was seriously irritating, and before long, Microsoft fixed many of the circumstances in which these 'flashbangs' (as they were widely dubbed) were occurring. However, the white flashes remained in some parts of File Explorer.

As outlined by Microsoft, those glitches that were still kicking around when resizing some elements of File Explorer, or when having it set to open to 'This PC', have now been cured. That should be the last of the dark mode-related gremlins in the works, with any luck.

Microsoft is also bringing in a useful improvement to enable Windows 11 users to more easily access dark mode. Windows Latest highlighted a post on X from leaker PhantomOfEarth, who spotted a new option to turn on dark mode (or switch it off) in the Quick Settings menu accessed via the taskbar. There's a new dark mode toggle in the Energy Saver panel here, although this is still in testing for now (as is the mentioned fix).

Analysis: a baffling timescale

Windows 11 Update showing on laptop in an office

(Image credit: TechRadar)

A quick toggle for dark mode is something that should have been introduced before now, ideally, but it's still good to see the feature inbound. Right now, if you want to change between dark and light modes, you need to dive a couple of levels into the Settings app (Settings > Personalization > Colors), which isn't a huge deal, but it's not exactly convenient either.

Mind you, the whole timescale of the overall work with dark mode — in terms of its slow and piecemeal introduction to Windows 11 — has been baffling. Why has it taken so very long to do this? Clearly it's not high on the list of priorities for Windows 11, but even so — the time taken for a basic feature to be universally applied across the OS just seems to have dragged on and on.

On top of that, it's worth noting that it's been five months since the flashbang bug in File Explorer — caused by work on dark mode — first manifested, and it's still an ongoing problem. Granted, this should be the end of the saga now, but this fix is still in testing, so we won't know if it actually works to bring an end to all scenarios where white flashes are still occurring until it rolls out to the general computing public using Windows 11.

Fingers crossed, then, but we've seen Microsoft's fixes introduce new bugs before, so it's far from guaranteed that this will be a full end to the matter.

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